Oakland residents are about to see a different side of City Auditor Courtney Ruby, who announced plans to run for mayor this week.

The fightin' side.

Ruby said little last year to counter accusations of racism leveled at her by Oakland's NAACP branch and the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce after her audit found that the city's two black council members - Desley Brooks and Larry Reid - violated City Charter rules by interfering with the city's contracting process.

But as a mayoral candidate, she will not stand mute.

"I am fully prepared for that level of retribution coming my way," Ruby said. "The bottom line was the facts I followed were fair - and they were fair for everybody. For as much energy as those individuals put into calling me a racist, people know who I am."

If Ruby's report was inspired by a hidden racial agenda, it would come as quite a shock for her two adopted African American-Latino boys, ages 5 and 6.

She described the political tempest that followed the report's release in March as an attempt to distract people from the facts - and she's unapologetic for her work.

The sideshow that followed the report into council chambers was designed to turn the proceedings into another chaotic council meeting - and it worked.

"People wouldn't come forward to be heard in that mob scene. The fear that people had in that room created an environment where the council folded," she said.

"When you have a city that wants to play by the rules and its leaders can't be held accountable, that's a leadership crisis - and that's exactly why I'm running," she said. "This city has real problems, and this stuff is not going to back me down."

Ruby's evaluation of Oakland's elected leaders didn't stop with the council.

She said incumbent Mayor Jean Quan has massaged crime statistics to present a partial and incomplete picture to citizens.

"The mayor has consistently put out false facts about decline in all levels of crime, but that's not true," she said. "Robberies are going up, and businesses and residents alike are scared - and that upsets our base."

Residents at a town hall meeting in West Oakland last week complained that the city has yet to implement a crime strategy in their community because there is such a heavy emphasis on East Oakland, she said.

"If you don't have effective management to continue making progress and implement a full-on public strategy, that affects the whole city."

Ruby believes her background in accounting, passion and professional mandate to lay out the facts will make her stand out in a field of a half-dozen candidates.

Ruby, 46, is a native of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. She is a 1989 graduate of American University and spent nine months in Ghana working to improve the lives of African children in 2003 and 2004. She has served two terms as Oakland's auditor. She lives with her children in the south Oakland hills near the Oakland Zoo.

The family lived in East Oakland near the Eastmont Mall until a shooting in the summer of 2012 occurred less than 20 yards away while she was unloading her car.

The impetus for the mayoral run comes from her love of Oakland and her children, who deserve to live in a safe city, Ruby said.

Even though she, too, is an elected official, Ruby wants distance between her office and the mayor's and the policymakers on the Oakland City Council.

"Residents want city government to play by the rules and be accountable, and the only way we're going to have the kind of city we want is to believe that we (government) have a process and the integrity to figure out what's working, what's not working, and fix it."